Gender Equality, Prevention and Response to Gender Based Violence

Details

Mission and objectives

UNFPA is the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. Our mission is to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled.

Context

The UNFPA has its presence in each of the Central Asian countries focusing on Gender Equality and expanding the rights and opportunities of women and girls by realizing the work with the state bodies to establish comprehensive systems and mechanisms for women and adolescents to make informed choices and be protected from violence, and promote positive social norms in the society by engaging men and boys. These activities are being implemented using its own regular resources as well as other resources mobilised from interested donors. One of the donor is the UK Government through UK Conflict Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) which supports projects in 5 CA countries and where the UNFPA Kazakhstan CO was given the task to implement the sub-regional project for Central Asia and overall coordination role and responsibility for direct cooperation with the Donor. Violence against women and girls remains a pervasive violation of fundamental rights in most countries and territories in Central Asia. Despite progress in legislation, prevention and prosecution, violence against women and girls is still widespread, with multiple repercussions on their wellbeing. Moreover, during or in the aftermath of conflicts or other crises, the incidence of sexual and gender-based violence increases, while access to justice for survivors can be severely impeded. In situations of instability, GBV can also fuel conflict and is a challenge to peace. Political instability, border conflicts, the conflict in Afghanistan and Ukraine, and the sanctions against Russia can increase migration which may lead to social tensions in communities and might negatively affect the prevalence, reaction and response to GBV. The project will be aimed at building capacity of national and subnational authorities to prevent and reduce GBV in both humanitarian and development settings by ensuring that a survivor centred, Human Rights based and gender transformative and inclusive legal and policy environment is available and that service providers and first responders improve their capacity on GBV. The project will also aim to strengthen GBV coordination mechanisms that are in place at regional and national level while ensuring coordination with relevant partners and donors active in the area/sector. There will be also a focus on increasing uptake of the services provided by addressing social norm changes to prevent GBV and foster resilient and peaceful societies across all of the targeted communities, including border areas and on targeting religious leaders and key actors at community level (media representatives) with tailored communication and educational materials, awareness raising events and trainings. The project will foresee country-specific activities as well as sub-regional exchanges and capacity building to foster cross-learning and sharing of good practices across the region. The International UNV’s assignment would be to support the UNFPA Kazakhstan CO team with implementation of the Kazakhstan country programme’s gender and youth components and sub-regional project supported by UK CSSF

Task description

Under the direct supervision of UNFPA Programme Analyst on Gender and Population and Development, the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks: • Provide necessary support in effective implementation of activities on prevention and response to gender-based violence (GBV), multi-sectoral response to gender-based vio-lence, engagement of Faith-Based organization, changing social norms toward gender-based violence and harmful practices, men and boys’ engagement, etc. The incumbent is expected to participate in discussion of projects’ design and activities that contribute to gender equality. A special attention should be given to leaving no one behind concept focusing on people with disabilities • Provide support to implementation of the UK CSSF sub-regional project implementa-tion that covers five Central Asian countries, quarterly reporting by collecting infor-mation from the countries and compiling the progress report as draft for submission to the UK • Conduct a desk review and identify best innovative practices in the areas of prevention and response to GBV, partnership and collaboration with FBOs, changing social norms in the communities toward GBV and harmful practices, men and boy’s engagement and based on the findings make presentations for the UNFPA staff of Kazakhstan and CA coun-tries to brainstorm on possible adaptation of those practices to the CA context • Support in development of strong communication messages aimed at general popula-tion, policy makers, specific groups about benefits of gender equality, needs of changing social norms, engagement of men and boys, etc. • Assist in promoting women empowerment activities as part of advocacy and com-munication for impact campaigns, including development of communication products (for example: success stories/human interest stories, visualization and dissemination of policy briefs and reports, surveys). • Provide support to development of proposals for resource mobilization for gender relat-ed activities as well as project implementation and reporting • Undertake any other tasks as might be required by the direct supervisor or UNFPA management.